At A University, The Question 'Who's In Charge Here?' Comes With A Lot Of Answers

The words on the no-confidence resolution approved by Cal Poly Pomona faculty on Dec. 6 were a banner public declaration that something is wrong with the running of the 26,000-student campus.

The resolution said the faculty:

The provost, Jennifer Brown, was the university’s top academic officer. Faculty who talked to LAist said they liked what she had been doing to improve student success toward degrees and the hiring of deans who oversaw academic matters at the university’s various schools.

“The structure of decision-making, of policy at any university should be done with everybody in mind: faculty, staff, students, administrators,” said political science department chair Mario Guerrero, who wrote the first draft of the resolution.

Guerrero doesn’t deny that Coley had a right to make that call. But the bold move by Cal Poly Pomona’s Academic Senate to challenge the president’s decision underlines tensions at this and other campuses across the country between two of the most powerful decision-making constituencies at colleges and universities.

A tug of war over the direction of college campuses

There are three main constituent groups that run college and university campuses: the university president, a board of trustees, and faculty, who are organized into academic senates and, on many campuses, into labor unions.

Generally, trustees set policy directions and hire presidents, presidents hire top administrators, and faculty go about the work of instruction as guided by those administrators’ policies.

“The resolution is a real clear signal to administration that collaborative work has broken down,” Guerrero said. He added that he and other professors would have wanted Coley to have consulted with the faculty’s academic senate on the provost’s removal.

By one count conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 college faculty groups around the country had issued no-confidence statements against their administrators by September of this year.

“Throughout my presidency at Cal Poly Pomona, I have supported and engaged in shared governance and that commitment remains strong,” Coley said in a statement to LAist.

Guerrero’s expectation isn’t new or unique to his campus. Shared governance goes back over 100 years and was affirmed by faculty and university boards in a 1966 document underlining that the three groups should share in the running of various parts of the university.

Guerrero would have wanted the president to engage in a robust debate about the effects of removing the provost. The way Coley did so, faculty said, contributed to confusion and instability.

Unwelcome surprises

Faculty at nearby California State University, Fullerton had similar complaints this past February when they received an email from then-President Fram Virjee that a search was underway for an interim provost.

“My initial response was surprise. Why? I would like to know what's going on,” said Aitana Guia, a history professor at California State University, Fullerton and co-president of Researchers and Critical Educators.

The email didn’t name Provost Carolyn Thomas so it was unclear, Guia said, whether Thomas had been fired. Thomas had been a role model, Guia said, as a woman who was a renowned scholar in the field of American studies and who was carrying out changes to improve learning, such as better student advising, a proposal Guia said has been abandoned by the new provost.

In response to a request to comment on Thomas’ removal, Cal State Fullerton spokesperson Cerise Metzger said that the “provost position is a member of the management personnel plan (MPP). MPP employees serve at the pleasure of the president, and the non-retention of an MPP is not subject to shared governance.”

She added that Virjee addressed the Academic Senate on March 2 to talk about the appointment of an interim provost. Metzger said she did not have enough information about Thomas’ advising program to comment on it.

Unlike the Pomona campus, Fullerton’s Academic Senate did not issue a no-confidence vote against Virjee. He retired in July.

The details behind the two provosts’ removals are hidden from public view in personnel files, which are not disclosed.

The 'corporatization' of the university

Observers say these kinds of conflicts between faculty and administration over the direction of a college or university are becoming more common.

“Because of the corporatization of campuses, they've been moving to have much more top-down decision making,” said Adrianna Kezar, director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at USC.

For example, Kezar said, many universities have been hiring more part-time faculty as a cost-cutting move. That’s a policy direction many organized faculty groups have asked top administrators to stop.

Full-time faculty, she added, have more time to mentor and guide students than do part-time instructors.

“The money for faculty and for instruction has gone down dramatically over the last 30 or 40 years,” Kezar said. “The money for administration, the money for marketing, branding and all these kinds of corporate things has gone way up on campuses."

How do shared governance conflicts affect students?

Low graduation rates have pushed universities such as the CSU system to pressure students to reach graduation day and improve the supports for them to achieve that goal. Increased transfers from community colleges also mean that students on many campuses spend less than four years on campus, often not enough time to learn about and get involved in the workings of their university.

“It's hard with students … they're here with us for a couple years and it's a very transient population,” Guerrero said.

There’s one solution to that: Add students to the shared governance formula. It adds work to the running of the campus but experts say it’s good for students.

“For students, yes, the more voices that are at the table including their own, the better the policies are,” researcher Kezar said. “We've got a lot of evidence to that effect … shared governance is very beneficial for students.”